Helping Professionals Change Their Careers

HonnolDCounseling provides expert guidance to professionals who are fundamentally dissatisfied with their careers and wish to find a new career.

Are you stuck in the wrong career? HonnolDCounseling works with many unhappy professionals who must acknowledge they are misplaced in their current profession:

• “Every day, I just don’t want to go to work.”
• “I can’t get out of bed on weekdays, but on weekends I have lots of energy.”
• “I get insomnia every Sunday night, sometimes even on Saturday.”
• “I get a pit in my stomach, or a headache, when I think about work.”
• “I’m not interested in the issues at work.”
• “I don’t want to read anything about my field.”
• “I read emails, check news and weather, and do anything but my work.”
• “My work is like pushing a rock up a mountain.  It doesn’t come easily.”
• “None of my friends works in my field.”
• “I never want to talk about my work.  When someone asks me ‘what I do,’ I’m embarrassed about it, and I try to change the subject.”
•  “I don’t identify with my work.  It seems meaningless and pointless.”
• “I find it boring.”
• “I don’t talk to anyone at my job.  I’m stuck in my office all day.”
• “I always keep the door closed.”
• “I have fantasies of just walking out.”
• “I often hear a voice inside that says, ‘This is not who you really are!’”
• “If I didn’t need the income, I’d quit tomorrow.”
• “I have fantasies about opening up a restaurant, or driving a bus.”
• “I hate my job.”

HonnolDCounseling can help you to:

• Confront the uncomfortable but inescapable reality that you may be “stuck in the wrong career”;
• Overcome your fear and doubts about leaving your current profession;
• Identify a new career better suited to you; and
• Take practical steps to pursue it.

Many factors may be responsible for your current professional mismatch:

• Your earlier, genuine interests in life may have been set aside.
•  A school adviser may have misadvised you.
• Powerful “family messages” may have overly influenced you.
• You may have embarked on your career “not knowing what else to do.”
• You may have pursued your current career to make use of your degree, and because you accrued significant debt acquiring it.
• Your current profession may have suited you at an earlier time, but your interests, values and priorities may have changed.
• A spouse or family demands may oblige you to continue in your unhappy career.
• You may be too depressed to assess your options and make a move.
• You may be fundamentally unclear about how your interests, skills and values align with different careers.
• You may not have the skills you need in order to change your career.

Most professionals are deeply reluctant to acknowledge that a career has ended, because:

• There is always momentum in maintaining a status quo.
• It is costly to make a career change.
• It is daunting to start over.
• You could fear that you will make another mistake.
• You could be clueless about what to do next.

However, you may compound your losses if you continue in your current, unhappy work:

• Your productivity may decline and jeopardize your job security;
• Anxiety about your ability to support yourself and your family will increase if you continue to do work for which you are ill-suited;
• Your distress and lack of passion for your work could make you sick.

There is no “short cut” to a thoughtful decision to leave your current profession:

• No “bright line” formula exists to determine if your current career can be saved.
• The decision cannot be made “casually,” nor in a rigid format.
• The decision is personal and subjective, but also takes into account objective factors, such as finances and job availability.
• In some cases, the answer is clear.  In other cases, the answer is difficult to discern and emerges gradually over time.
• No one can make this decision for you. You must make it for yourself.

HonnolDCounseling helps professionals who are mismatched to their careers cut their losses, take account of who they really are, and make a fresh start professionally.